Some years ago, after a controversy, a Tamil author had declared the writer in himself dead. He is now resurrected and writing again. Can a writer ever not write? Can he dam up the words inside him? Can he damn himself? The words will find their way out.Writing is a dredging of the soul. A scraping of the bottom of the bottle, painful but pleasurable when one manages to get a spoonful. I cannot manage more than the word limit of a newspaper column. But brevity can be the soul of wit. Writing is writing, be it a page or a tome.
But what if you cannot get your finger to write? Not due to writer’s block. An author said writer’s block is like cerebral menopause. I am nowhere near my cerebral menopause. Writing is not easy. It is the holding of a mirror into one’s own self and then baring it to the world. That is what pulls a reader into the writer’s world. The reader creates a world in his mind that is only partially the writer’s. But it is the writer who is inviting us to create a new world. Dishonesty will put the reader off.
I put off putting words to paper thinking they will get bogged down under the weight of daily living. It is a foolish hope. The busyness of everyday life does not stifle the small voice inside. Rather every moment leavens up the earlier, creating a new symphony that finally finds a voice in black and white. A still small voice but raging all the same. A writer does not have the luxury of living like others. He cannot walk past life uninvolved, uncaring. Every experience bears a meaning to him beyond the actual event.
That is his burden however. There is a voice wanting to cry out. But do people want to hear it? Writing is not a performance art. A dancer or musician practices in private but the performance is public. The response is immediate.
Can words take hold of a crowd like that? The spoken word may stir a crowd but the written word? Thoughts that have agonised the writer and words the writer has agonised over may just end up as so many pulped trees. Can he worry over whether the words will find acceptance? That choice is not given him. Nor do the words allow him to lie quiet. The moving finger cannot not write. Having writ, it moves on.